Jake Simpson (00:00)
So with this one, I'm with Alyssa Finlay. Now Alyssa is a producer. What that means, I'll leave you to decide. There is a thread on a forum that we talk about where they we talk about producers as wonderful pieces of wonderful pieces of the machinery or what was the other thing? Useless meat bags of

Alyssa Finley (00:18)
You less bag bags of meat, yes, yeah. A little bit of both, I think.

Jake Simpson (00:23)
Right, okay. So Alyssa and I have known each other for quite some time, and she is she's been involved in some very amazing product. There's no doubt about it. You've you've had a career, haven't you?

Alyssa Finley (00:34)
have done my best. I mean, I I realized I I was chatting with someone earlier today and realized that this is the thirtieth year. So if I haven't done anything interesting in thirty years, then I've done it wrong.

Jake Simpson (00:44)
Years! Wow. I mean I think I'm at 42, something like that for me. But I mean that's still 30 years of anywhere in any industry is a big deal. That's that's two o honorary degrees worth, according to emigration, American immigration. Yeah, anyway. So how did you how did you care about how did games grab you? I mean, you're not I know you're not strictly speaking in games at this pre precise moment, but quite a lot of your career has been spent there, right?

Alyssa Finley (01:11)
Yeah, yeah. And I mean I've I think games has just always been a part of who I am. From the time when I was a elementary school kid and my dad, who was a high school teacher, would bring home an Apple computer over the summer when they weren't using them at school and we would play Zork. So games started there and just never stopped. I think the reason I got hired for my first game job is because I had been playing

Trade Wars, which was an old play by email BBS game, and I had played it in high school, and I had played it obsessively and a lot. And so when they were working on a play-by-email game for Prodigy called Rebel Space way back in 1992, they said, you've you've done one of, you've played one of these before. You know what you're you know what you're talking about. So they hired me to work on that.

Jake Simpson (02:04)
Okay, Prodigy. That was just prior to AOL time, wasn't it? It was Prodigy, there was the well, there was AOL.

Alyssa Finley (02:08)
It was.

Copy sir.

Jake Simpson (02:14)
Where everybody had a number a unique ID instead of an actual username. Yes, I remember that.

Alyssa Finley (02:19)
Yeah, no, I think Prodigy and CompuSurf both didn't allow you to you had some sort of incomprehensible string of numbers and that was you. Yes. Which in retrospect they were very smart and we should have stuck with that.

Jake Simpson (02:31)
See now, I I'm I'm of the opinion that I feel that everyone should use their full names because I feel like I on all the forums I'm on, any sort of game related forum, I always use my real name. I always I'm always Jay Simpson. Because I will say things and I will do things and I will talk about people or talk about situations that I should not be speaking publicly about if I don't keep myself honest.

Alyssa Finley (02:55)
Fair enough. Fair enough. Well you are better than the rest of us.

Jake Simpson (02:58)
No, I'm not. That's precisely the reason. That's why I have to do this. It's not a question of I'm I am better than everybody else. It's just that I know I wouldn't be if I didn't do this. So yeah. Anyway, okay. So your first job, tell me about it.

Alyssa Finley (03:14)
was hired by this little tiny company in San Rafael, California called Beyond Software. It was run by Don Daglow, who is himself fairly luminary in the game industry. And my first job was to do some customer service for that Rebel Space game, the play by email game. Well, because I just I was fresh out of college with a math computer science degree. So they were also using the other half of my brain to

be to be the juniorist of junior programmers working on a I think it was a sequel. I c I can't remember. Whatever it was, it never actually came to be. But the the notion was I was going to be partially customer service, partially programming. And that did play out in that I, you know, eventually transitioned out of customer service and all into programming for quite a while for about ten years.

Jake Simpson (04:02)
say what did you do for your that with your other hand? I mean wow that's talk about using every part of you. Did you did they have you doing anything with your feet?

Alyssa Finley (04:12)
Well, I think it was as a play by email game, the good news is it was one set of inputs a day and one set of outputs a day. So it wasn't it wasn't the sort of live service that we deal with now.

Jake Simpson (04:23)
I see. Yeah, yeah, quite. But it's still that was where it all started though, isn't it? I mean that is I should point out that she's nodding. You can't see, but she's nodding. Right. So okay, now you were I mean, you and Don had a relationship that went for went on for quite some time, didn't you? 'Cause I know when I came across you it was Stormfront. Yes.

Alyssa Finley (04:31)
I am nodding.

So, Beyond became Stormfront, it was rebranded at some point.

Jake Simpson (04:45)
It was rebranded. Okay. So what what other stuff did you work on at at w you know, Stormfront slash whatever?

Alyssa Finley (04:53)
Bunch of games starting with Macports of kids games, Eagle Eye Mysteries. Eagle Eye Mysteries goes to London. and w I think we had a couple of edutainment games, like Byzantine, The Betrayal, and then Star Trek got to work on Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Stormfront just was working for as a third party developer. So whatever came through that was that you know that was interesting and funded, we would get to work on. I believe I went

I was there and t I was there for quite a while, but then I at some point in like in the late part of the nineties, I decided that I had just I knew everything that I could possibly know and I really needed to be somewhere else because I clearly understood everything about game development and wasn't in the right place for me, as we all do in our first jobs. And so I decided to go

try to work somewhere else for a while and get some experience in the industry, which was its own little tumbler of fun, because that was right about the time of the dot com era. So I had my shortest job ever right after leaving Stormfront, where I worked for EA for I think two and a half weeks, 'cause I joined.

Jake Simpson (06:05)
Okay, I'm gonna have to interrupt you 'cause I you beat. I did volition for seven days. I agree. Yeah. I'll tell that story later, but keep going, yeah.

Alyssa Finley (06:10)
You win.

I I took a job and I was working for because I was very excited. I I'd enjoyed working on edutainment and working on things for kids. So it was for the the Maxis Kids line of games, back when Maxis was existed and was a thing. And they hired me into Maxis Kids to work on something related to Simtown. And then the day after I got there, after my orientation, they said, they pulled me aside and they were like, Alyssa, we're gonna cancel

like game you're working on, but or we're gonna cancel actually back to this kids. It's not gonna be a thing anymore. It's just gonna be Max as part of EA. But it's okay. The project you're working on still exists. We're gonna keep that going. It's gonna be fine. I said, hmm, okay. Kept on keeping on. And then approximately two weeks later they canceled the project they had hired me for. And at that point I was just like, you know what? I think I have I think I've made a mistake here.

And you know, I'm I could have stayed and I'm sure it wouldn't have been a mistake. I'm sure it would have been lovely because that was when Will Will Wright was still there and they were working on some absolutely smart and and wonderful things. I think I just got off on the wrong foot with EA.

Jake Simpson (07:21)
I I well, you are not alone with those kinds of situations when they hired me, when Max has hired me, remember I worked on Sims Two. I was hired for SimCity four. That's what I was hired for. And I went through the interviews for everybody. I did one interview on the Sims and that was it. And then everything else was an interview with with on SimCity four. And I was hired for SimCity four and before I even arrived I was transferred across to Sims two.

I didn't even get there and I've been moved across. Not that I was unhappy about it, 'cause I was really happy. I got to work with my friend Jonathan Knight, who is now the CEO of not CEO I think he might be. He's he's vice president at New York Times. He runs their games division. And he's he's the guy who just bought Wordle.

Alyssa Finley (08:03)
Mark guy.

Jake Simpson (08:04)
Yeah, I can a lot of times, Jonathan, I must say. Anyway, yeah, so you have a similar experience. I think yeah, I can quite quite understand here your your situation and how you felt about it. So what did you do then?

Alyssa Finley (08:17)
I went and I I interviewed I think I had already interviewed, but I didn't I it didn't go fast enough or something with a little company called Cygnosis, which was opening a San Francisco office. Also a great story because their big pitch for the San Francisco office is they were gonna make PC games. They were gonna focus exclusively on PC games, which if you know Cygnosis at all, you would say

Jake Simpson (08:40)
PlayStation.

Alyssa Finley (08:41)
Yeah, exactly. Why would you do that? But I think that was the niche that they thought the San Francisco office was going to be great for. And so they had I think I think four different teams working on PC only pitches in downtown downtown San Francisco office, beautiful office. Probably I think Ubisoft is there now or was there for a while anyway. Gorgeous office, perfect location, fantastic people, so many smart folks, four teams running in parallel.

And then I think at some point, maybe nine or somewhere nine months to a year in there, somebody ran the numbers on how much a PC only game was gonna be able to make in the market we were in and compared it against the budgets we were asking for, and suddenly none of it made any mathematical sense and we were dissolved pretty quickly after that. I'm sure there was a much deeper story to it behind the scenes, but that was from a you know from a programmer's point of view.

Jake Simpson (09:41)
my desk all of a sudden somebody comes and puts their arm your shoulder and says, Hey. Yeah, been there, done that.

Alyssa Finley (09:49)
So now I'm learning that maybe I should do a little bit more research, not only about, you know, whether the company I'm working for has just been bought, but also the business model of the products that I'm getting hired for. And I'm getting this little school of not hard knocks education about why you why it matters to pay attention to the context around the job you're taking, not just go, my God, that sounds like the most amazing project ever. I yes, yes, a thousand times. Yes. So from there I went and worked for a little tiny

Startup in Silicon Valley, and now we're we're right at dot-com land called Zowie Entertainment, and they were making playsets for kids. So I'm now I'm back into kids stuff, super happy about that. They had this technology that allowed you to make a toy in the two that they made. One of them was a pirate ship, one of them was sort of a playground, and they could sense the location of these tokens on the board. So kids could be playing and interfacing via the toy.

And then playing a game on the screen at the same time. And so it was really changing around the notion of computer interfaces and of how you how you would can how controllers would work. Super fun stuff. Super really, really just enthusiastic, wonderful people. And that company was one of the interval research startups like Purple Moon, like a many other places spun out of interval, as I recall. And Zowie got bought by Lego.

Jake Simpson (11:14)
Well, there's worse places to be bought by, isn't there, let's face it.

Alyssa Finley (11:17)
And it was in around two thousand that they got bought by Lego, and that was when Lego was putting out some Star Wars sets. So boy did Lego have a couple of good years right around then. Now the one drawback to the technology that Zowie had, which was pretty pretty fantastic and pretty fun and very tactile in a way that I'm sure fits very appealing to a company like Lego, the one little caveat those tokens did not stack.

Way, shape, or form. Just the one thing they could not do. They had a range of about four inches above the sensor board and they could not be stacked in any way.

So couple months later, I think it was the year after Phantom Menace and they had this phenomenal year along with Star Wars coming out, and then they had maybe not such a phenomenal year. Maybe it wasn't as big as they thought. And maybe that little Silicon Valley startup in San Mateo that cost probably five times the amount of their

hometown crowd back in Billund didn't seem like such a good investment anymore. So we got shut down.

Jake Simpson (12:31)
I I've gotta say, Zowie though, as a name, I've I look at that and I go, Wow, that is Silicon Valley right there, isn't it? I mean South.

Alyssa Finley (12:42)
Zowie entertainment with an eye. Entertainment.

Jake Simpson (12:45)
Muture Zeitman.

Right, okay, 'cause that makes it simple. All right, okay.

I shouldn't laugh because it's not funny, but it is. So now you've been shut down again. My God, this is starting to, you know, I'm starting to see a pattern here. And it's not you, it's just the industry we're in. I was trying to explain this to a friend the other day about after you've been in this industry for a while, you know, you just start out and you hear about these these veterans, yeah, that got shut down or that project never completed or whatever. And you look at them and you think, Well, there's something wrong with you. You know, you there's so much failed you, something wrong with And then you're in this industry for like three or four years and you're like, Yeah, there's nothing wrong with you.

That's just the way this industry is.

Alyssa Finley (13:27)
It can be. And I think it was especially tough times around the around the, you know, the two thousands, the dot com era. Everything was getting big and getting small and be you know, the money was flowing and then the money was disappearing. It was it was interesting times.

Jake Simpson (13:42)
Yes.

Alyssa Finley (13:43)
I mean just just as now.

Jake Simpson (13:45)
Yes.

Alyssa Finley (13:47)
So I tucked my tail though. I said, Okay, I have learned what it is to go out and find jobs and chase cool projects and follow my dream. And I went back to Stormfront where they had a need. They had they had a they had a spot where they were looking for someone to just come in on help out a project that was that it just needed a little bit a little bit more management. And at that point I was moving out of to the I moved into being a technical director, but now I was

Thinking, well, maybe I'm maybe I'm more of a producer tech. I'm not sure. I I think I like the part with the humans more than I like the part with the coding. And so I went back to Stormfront and did a couple more projects over there. I worked on the Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers game. And I worked on some some other things around there. Learned a lot from working with Neil Young and Arcadia Kim at at EA on the on the Two Towers game. And that was a that was a big learning experience.

Jake Simpson (14:46)
Neil's a an interesting guy. We worked for him he he came in and and actually got Sims two shipped. 'cause it wasn't ever gonna get shipped before he came in. We didn't even have a delivery date until he arrived. Actually I'm gonna just take for a second and jump back to your Star Trek thing, Deep Space Nine. So did you find dealing with Paramount at the time to be challenging?

Alyssa Finley (15:08)
They had so they they had very strong approvals, absolutely. And we were working with, you know, we were working with the Deep Space Nine cast, which I think Deep Space Nine was maybe not as prestigious at the time than some of the other properties. So we didn't have a hard time, as I recall, this was a long time ago. I don't think we had a hard time with anything other than things like art approvals, just making sure that you know, Odo looked like Odo and Quark looked like Quark.

Jake Simpson (15:36)
We were you dealing with Harry Lang?

Alyssa Finley (15:39)
Don't think so, but I was on more on the tech side at that point. I wasn't producing that.

Jake Simpson (15:44)
So we because I remember working with Harry on Star Trek Elite Force and we're still friends to this day actually. Harry's a CEO, he was a sorry, a VP at Hallmart for a long time and I think he's just moved on, I'm not sure. But yeah, we found it very difficult because at the time all of the Star Trek licenses were separate licenses. So Deep Space Nine was its own license and Voyager was its own license and never the twain could be crossed. I remember in in Elite Force we wanted to use some original series stuff.

And they they were very difficult to try and get us the rights because at the time Interplay still had the rights for the original series. And we wanted to use some Klingon ships and some some original series ships. And in the end, we had to get special dispensation from Interplay, who had still had the license, in order that we were allowed to use them, because Paramount kept saying, No, no, can't use those. That's and it was a ridiculous thing where Activision at the time only had they had the TNG license, they had Voyager.

I don't think they even had Deep Space Nine at the time and they certainly didn't have the original series. And Enterprise hadn't started yet. Because we w we got onto the stage to see the Enterprise Bridge before it actually launched. I was at E three where we were selling Voyager that year, I think. Yeah. It was heartbreaking. I remember going onto the Paramount lot and walking around and seeing stuff from Voyager in skips.

Alyssa Finley (16:54)
We would

Jake Simpson (17:07)
just doing chucked out and it was like you seeing the ventulum and bits of the end the engine room and it was just like it was heartbreaking to walk past this and go well that's just getting chucked out but then you think about it these are big sit big sets who's gonna keep those you know who's gonna keep them all but still it was heartbreaking anyway right sorry we I went outside to talk about that. So you're back at at Stormfront. Yeah that's where I came across you. I think that was actually when we were talking about Lord of the Rings because I think I came to interview there for Lord of the Rings I think because I know you chipped Blood Wake.

Yep. on the Xbox. And I'm pretty sure that's where I came across you for the very first time. And I remember your car. Your Audi TT.

Alyssa Finley (17:46)
I missed that car.

Jake Simpson (17:48)
That's a lovely car. A friend of mine has one in England now and it's like it this thing goes like, you know, shut off a shovel. It's a it's a quick car.

Alyssa Finley (17:55)
It is a fun car. I I I I miss it terribly. I had to sell it about I don't ten years ago. It's beautiful.

Jake Simpson (18:05)
Have you not not replaced it with anything else?

Alyssa Finley (18:08)
yellow card now, which is its own I have a I I have a of a a little a little fun hybrid Lexus C T. So

Jake Simpson (18:16)
that's those are nice. Those are quite those are quite nice cars. Very very comfortable, I must say. Yeah, my my modified Mustang is it's I'm starting to look at it hard now because it's been so modified, I have to use a special gasoline in it, I use eight five E eighty five in it. There's only three gas stations in Phoenix that actually carry it. And I get twelve miles to the gallon. And it's just like, you know, yes, I got I've got five hundred horsepower. That's wonderful. I can't actually use that most of the time.

And and you I don't anyway because it's terrifying. I start out at forty miles an hour, suddenly I'm doing a hundred and twenty. What what happened? You know, it's just yeah. Yeah, I I must have been your car was fun. I remember that. And I remember you saying to me, Well, you want to get a job here complimenting my car, that's the way to do it. I remember those were your exact words.

Alyssa Finley (19:03)
I I apparently apparently you decided not to take the job then. Well.

Jake Simpson (19:07)
Well,

EA did give me since so I kind of felt, you know, I did all right there. I was that's what I wanted. That's I I've been blowing stuff up at Raven. The Soldier Fortune and I told this story in a different podcast where at the time Joe Lieberman was on a on a warpath for Congressman or Senator or whatever he was. He had a real hard on for video games. And there was one time when he actually stood up and he went

Yeah, these these video games are terrible. I mean two of the worst ones are definitely Mortal Kombat and Soldier of Fortune. But I am the only person on earth who's worked on both. So I am public enemy number one.

Alyssa Finley (19:46)
Did not know that. I I everything becomes clearer now.

Jake Simpson (19:51)
Thanks a lot.

My wife always well she was at the time was a school teacher and she used to intro when we got introduced, she'd always say that she balanced me out. 'Cause she taught children to read and I taught them to blow stuff up. So that's why I went to do The Sims, I think, actually, because it was building rather than destroying. That's one of the things I really liked about it. Okay, so you're back at Stormfront. You've done now, you've done Lord of the Rings, which let's face it, a lot of people would give someone's left arm to work on that that particular intellectual property. Was that difficult working with Tolkien's estate?

Alyssa Finley (20:24)
Well, we had the movie license. So it was everything that we did in the first couple of years of development, as I recall, was done without information about the movie because we didn't have it yet. And so ultimately, as I recall, a lot of that got and when I say a lot, I mean pretty much all of it got thrown away because it wasn't

Tied tightly to the movie that was about to come out and that the the game was, I believe, was tied close to day and date, if not day and date with. So once we got a couple of scenes and started to understand how that was working, that was when Neil and Arcadia came in and said, Look, this is a movie game, and we are gonna make a movie game. And it's not about three different colors of orcs or whatever, whatever version we had when we didn't

Have the context of what the movie was doing. It's about the Urukai, and here they are, and here's exactly what they look like. So, if anything, I think the folks from EA came in with a strong enough vision that it wasn't hard to do what we were trying to do, because we were trying to be the movie in every possible way. And then so we ended up really recreating a few key scenes from from the two to from two towers and

working gameplay around them to contextualize it and make sense, which ultimately led to to being a an experience that pe some people still talk about today, which in is always is always wild to me to find folks who played those games and said, Yeah, Return of the King was the best ever. That was EA, that wasn't us. But it was, you know, it was based on the same theory of what we were trying to do.

Jake Simpson (22:05)
Which design work do you do? I mean, I know because with a producer, every producer I've ever come across, there's there's a frustrated designer inside of them. And and I don't, you know, how can I put this? Like certainly Jonathan Knight I mentioned earlier, he's very much a designer, producer, you know, carries the vision around in his head. Do you do a lot of that?

Alyssa Finley (22:26)
So at the time we're talking about I didn't. I was very much on the development director side, which as you know for me, D Ds are not frustrated creators in the slightest. They are people who are t in charge of carrying sticks and getting it done. And that was the work that I was doing was, you know, hopefully not so much the carrying the stick, but the trying to make sure that we had a game plan and getting it done. I think in them maybe in the in in in the time between then and now I have found a little bit more of that in me. But

Where I c by I mean, my biggest belief is that the people who are best at making games are the subject matter experts. You know, designers are designers for a reason, because they're thinking about that all day, every day. And as a producer, I am thinking about how to make sure that the you know, that we've got a budget that will suffice and that then we have the right crew at the right time and that we have the the things that we the team has the things that they need. So I'm not as focused on design as they are and

Therefore I might have opinions, but I'm certainly not the person to go to for answers.

Jake Simpson (23:28)
I see. That's an interesting point of view. Because I mean I I have run into quite a lot of producers who are frustrated creatives and and they will make mandates that you do look at them sideways and go, are you sure about that? But you know what, you're paying the money, so okay then. All right, so we've done done EA, we've done that. So what happens after after that? Are you still still confronting or are you off into the world?

Alyssa Finley (23:51)
We did another game. We did forgot I think it was it was Demonstone for Atari. It was it was yeah, it was a Forgotten Realms game and it had it was very much the same team that worked on Two Towers. We had this big idea that if you have played a party of three characters and you could switch on the fly, switch which character you were playing, that would change your change your strategy. So the you know, that was a that was a fun development. I think the game d went over with a resounding thud.

Jake Simpson (24:20)
I've got a story to tell you about that, actually. Demonstone, yes. So, at the time I was at I think I was I still at Raven or wasn't I? I don't even remember. But I remember we were working or just starting to work on X Men Legends. I was the original lead programmer for X Men Legends. It was targeted at the PlayStation two. And the view was a three quarter view in the same way the Demonstone was. And I remember us you looking at Demon Stone.

And saying, you know, this is the kind of view that we're looking for. This is what we we kind of want. And could we get the frame rate the Demon Stone got? No, we couldn't. We couldn't get the frame rate at all. You guys had a true sixty frames per second and and we couldn't get any higher than thirty. I think it was a lot to do with the way our lighting was set up. And I remember saying sending an email at e at Raven saying, you know, we're nowhere near this and we need to be like this because this is the kind of game we're trying to make, except we're making it with with

X Men instead of, you know, orgs and stuff. But it yeah, Demonstone was the template that we were using and comparing ourselves to. So I don't know, you that, but there you go.

Alyssa Finley (25:25)
I did not know that. And that that that makes me smile in retrospect. I mean it was a a a tremendously smart team at Stormfront. Really dedicated folks, people who people who could squeeze the last inch out of every piece of graphics for you know for those for those consoles at the time and it took a lot.

Jake Simpson (25:43)
So you were you were the one telling them to tighten out the graphics on level three. I love that line. I love that line. It's such a clueless line, but it's great. All right, so then what?

Alyssa Finley (25:55)
Then what? Well, I think I had a kid at some point around then. I can't remember the exact I was I think I think I started in 2003. I had a kid. So but I was I did that around working like while working at Stormfront. And I I think I what I remember happening is that actually I came back from maternity leave and I had this notion that I was gonna come back in a super chill way and work a couple days a week and then take a couple days off and hang out with the kiddo.

Jake Simpson (26:01)
Tiny.

Alyssa Finley (26:24)
And something happened right after I returned where they were like, that is not happening and you are full-time and you are you are working on whatever it was. It it it it needed full-time attention. So I those those plans were those best laid plans did not go exactly as planned, but I kept going. And I think it was a cup I think there were a couple of sort of didn't quite happen projects after that. And I ended up looking for a job and

going to Irrational in Boston as my next big career move. This time doing the job search with a bit more due diligence. Yes. And I I actually said no to a couple of things that time where I was like, absolutely, I could I start to be able to recognize like, this does not look like a place that is going to last. So I will not go here.

Jake Simpson (27:03)
Yeah.

Reason I am stuck in Phoenix is because I didn't do my due diligence. At the time, I made a bunch of friends at Raven that I still see to this day. We go to Vegas at once a year together, and I have some really good friends, very strong friendships from there. And then I went to EA and realistically didn't make friends with anybody, except for Jonathan. There's almost nobody at EA that I really talk to that much. And then I came out of EA and I thought, right, I want to go somewhere where I can make friends again, like I did at Raven. And I spent my time when I was looking at job.

interviews, spent my time looking for f a groups I could be friends with, rather than doing the technical due diligence on are these people ever going to actually ship anything. And I ended up at CME at Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment working on Stargate Worlds, which, you know, Stargate, great. I'm happy with that. I'd never done an MMO. I thought that was great. I had to move to Phoenix. Okay, it's cheap here. You know, I I'm okay. It's a few spent a few years here, learned to make my MMO, move on. Without realizing that there was never any sh never any.

chance that they were I should have realized because they'd rebooted the game once already. they had so much money that they weren't there was no hunger or pressure to ship. So I made a big mistake and didn't do my due diligence. Nice people though and I do still talk to to some of them so but they've all moved away and I'm still stuck here. So it could be worse. There's worse places to get stuck. Alright so irrational

Alyssa Finley (28:31)
People the people are what makes it worth it to do all the hard things we do, to be honest. So I'm not sure you were wrong.

Jake Simpson (28:37)
Perhaps but I mm I I prefer to to ship something. I I'm very much of the shipping mind and trying to get things done and get it out there. And when when that doesn't happen for me I get a little frustrated 'cause it's like, you know, that's waste of my time and waste of you know you've only got so many games inside of you. You've only got so much development time inside of you and I don't want to waste it, so a little frustrated. But never mind. So irrational, we need to talk about that.

Alyssa Finley (29:01)
Bioshock. Bioshock. So I was I I was so lucky because they were looking for a producer. They were looking for a project lead, in fact. That was the very specific title that they they wanted to hire for. They wanted somebody who would they had, I think, I believe they had just shipped SWAT for and they were they were about to roll the team onto a you know like complete teardown and rebuild of their version of Unreal to

support the Bioshock game that they had been dreaming of for years and pitching for years and starting to cook in their minds for years. But I showed up right as they were starting the for real, this is the team, this is the time, everything but the original demo version of Bioshock. So I got in right at pre-production on the game with this basically they had a strong design doc. They had a, you know, they had a strong demo and they had a

team that was full of ideas and and love for the system shock IP and for everything that the shocks meant. And what a ride that was. That is a team that I mean, that's a set of folks who know what they want and we'll stop at nothing to get it.

Jake Simpson (30:18)
So that was working with Ken, right?

Alyssa Finley (30:20)
Yeah. And that was Ring with Ken Levine. So

Jake Simpson (30:23)
What's about working with Ken? I mean Len's an alternate. He's he's he he has all talents everywhere and and it seems quite a scary environment to be in in terms of, you know, working with somebody like that. Tell me about it.

Alyssa Finley (30:36)
Gary, not so much. He has incredible charisma. And when he is making a sale, when he has something that he believes in that he wants to tell you about, it is like being transported to another world. I mean, you're just in this beam of sunshine of belief of like this is gonna be great, and you become the one with that belief and say, Yes, I would like to help you try to make that if it is if humanly possible. Thank you very much.

Jake Simpson (31:03)
it's like the the altered reality field that Steve Jobs used to project.

Alyssa Finley (31:07)
Perhaps, perhaps so. It was very powerful and very compelling. And and look, I think all if you look at what that team was able to do in the time frame that they did, you know, I I think there was a lot that was worth it about it. It was a hard development. I think the one of the challenges of having s working with folks who have a very high quality bar and who

know what they want is that when you don't deliver what they want, they're gonna have you try again until you get it right. And that's not always the smoothest and easiest process.

Jake Simpson (31:41)
Mm-hmm. Lots of iteration.

Alyssa Finley (31:43)
Lots of iteration.

Jake Simpson (31:45)
And sometimes you might not know what you want either. That's a that's another thing I've noticed is that sometimes if you don't know exactly what it is you want, you can only look at something somebody's done and and go, I don't I know I don't want that, but I'm not sure I do know what I want. And that that can be a frustrating thing, I think, from a developer point of view. Certainly I I find that.

Alyssa Finley (32:01)
Absolutely. What I saw, the biggest antidote to that, there were two that happened when I was at Irrational. And one of them was that I found that anytime we had to go in front of the press, it was kind of a forcing function for figuring out what we wanted. Like having to tell that story, having to say, this is what we are doing and why it matters and why you should care about it, helped crystallize what it should have been in the first place.

Jake Simpson (32:29)
I see. So you're sort of forcing yourself into into contortions or positions or something because now you're set you're telling the world. Yeah. I can get it. Yeah, I get it.

Alyssa Finley (32:38)
And the other secret weapon of irrational, which who is not always mentioned, but always should be, is John Che. Absolutely brilliant game designer, incredibly smart man, like producer extraordinaire. Like he was running the Australia office. He was partners with Ken, who was running the Boston office. And that Australian office was the engine, literally speaking. They were the graphics team. They were the ones working on the actual engine side, the rendering side, the

The HDR and anything else that we were doing that was cutting edge for gr for Xbox 360 graphics at the time was being driven from that office from Rowan and and and his team and John. And John was a huge influence on the sort of interface design, UI design, like experiential design, not so much the moment to moment of the story, but like how do we make sure the player understands the story?

John has an incredible talent for that. So that was the other secret weapon because there was some magic between those two partners, between Ken and John, that helped them both see more clearly and pass along what needed to happen.

Jake Simpson (33:52)
I see. I I this is all news to me. This is all great stuff to hear from you 'cause this is the kinds of stories I don't think that people really know. I mean, Bioshock is such a seminal game, both from a graphics point of view, let's face it, it it's gorgeously pretty. All the water and all the rest of it. And and just from a a stylistic point as well, point of view. I mean it's all your Anra and Rhind, you know, all that i all that imagery and it's beautiful. I mean it's beautiful, it's a fun game, it's not bloodthirsty on occasions.

And then and the whole concept of the little girls as well is a little that's quite terrifying in lots of ways. But it was great. It definitely feels from a gameplay point of view, from a player point of view, it definitely feels like this is a game that's got its shit together, if you know what I'm saying. And that from what you're describing, that was not always a smooth process. But you at least knew the direction you were moving and everyone was trying to row in the same direction, so to speak.

Alyssa Finley (34:47)
To to the best of our ability. I mean, I think we had some come to Jesus moments. we had a towards the end we had a focus test that was abysmal. it was really brutal. And it was basically saying that ev you know, our entire onboarding process for for the game was wrong, which was it was the best feedback we possibly could have gotten at the best time we could have gotten it. I mean, we could have gotten it earlier and it it's always better, but

We had completed enough at that point that we weren't worried about finishing the work we had. It was so we had to s take a step back and say, how do we make how do we actually make sure the player understands what we're offering them so they can use the tools they're being given? I mean, the real outcome of the first focus test, people were like, Meh, this is a lousy first-person shooter and my gun isn't very good. Why

Jake Simpson (35:37)
Right, okay. 'Cause you didn't know that you could throw things and use physics and all the rest of it. Right, okay.

Alyssa Finley (35:42)
So b having to re architect those the the opening experience of the game to invite the player into that world in a way that they would understand, that's a lot of the grace of that game comes from that onboarding sequence combined with the brilliant story of q who you are and what you do and why you do it, which

Jake Simpson (36:05)
And the choice that you get to make as well. Do I kill the girls and take the take the not mana, whatever what was it called? you know, take the power basically. Or do you do you help them out? Yeah, and then or do you Yeah, the Adam, that's right. Or do you do you save them, you know, sacrifice the Adam and and then at the end of the project they c hop hopefully they come back and be nice to you. Yeah. Yeah, I th I I don't know, I think it was inspiring. It was exactly the right thing at the right time as well. I mean your only competition at the time really was Halo. And I think

Alyssa Finley (36:34)
It's just a very different experience. I I think there's room for both in this in the gamescape.

Jake Simpson (36:39)
course and you know Call of Duty as well obviously. But yeah, I think you guys actually knocked it out of the park. I remember finishing the game and just leaning back and going, you know, it's not often where I lean back and go, God I that's a game I wish I could have worked on. And that is one of them. That's absolutely one of those games that I look back and go, Wow. And that's leading into because you then went back to to San Francisco.

Alyssa Finley (37:06)
I did, I did. I was asked to come back to San Francisco. I I mean the the fact that I hadn't changed my phone number or my you know, or my cell phone was maybe a clue that I might have missed the California homeland.

Jake Simpson (37:19)
So let you know, my my telephone number starts with ninety five.

Alyssa Finley (37:24)
There you go.

Jake Simpson (37:25)
Yeah. So so you're back in so Rational is starting an office at the two K offices. It's starting its own studio at the two K offices.

Alyssa Finley (37:34)
Right? That's right. They w the basically the the plan was to work on a sequel and well to work on the PS2 version of Bioshock because or the PS3 version of Bioshock because of course it was a 360 exclusive at the time, but we would not have wanted to let that go. So PlayStation version as well as a sequel to Bioshock on a two year timeframe.

With a team that we had to other than eight people who came from Boston, we had to hire entirely. I'm not sure I thought that went all the way through, but I think they had me at brand new studio doing cool Bioshock stuff.

Jake Simpson (38:15)
It's and it's worth pointing out. So just to point this out, where the studio was located was at there was an old biodrome, aerodrome up at up in Novato. The hangers. I know this because the next hanger along was Image Movers Digital. Right, because I worked for them on obviously on Christmas Carol and Mars Needs Moms, and I would come up from LA every now and again to the office.

Alyssa Finley (38:27)
I know. The hangers.

Image movies digital, that's it.

Did

you say Mars needs women? Because I lost you again for Mars needs mob.

Jake Simpson (38:45)
Mars Needs Moms.

One of the biggest failures that Disney's ever had, mainly because they abandoned it. Rich Ross came in to replace the original head of Disney movies and he took one look at this $170 million movie. yeah, he'd been making TV movies on like for Hannah Montana for 25 bucks and pocket change, and came in till this $170 million movie and went, Yeah, that's that's we're not doing any more of this. Anyway, but it's the weird thing.

Alyssa Finley (39:12)
So we were neighbors. I we were there, I

Jake Simpson (39:15)
Every time I went up to that, I remember there was a that that your office was having an outside barbecue. And I literally walked across from the office I was in, walked across and joined the end of the line to get barbecue with rock with the rock star and and and and buy shop teams or and you had to have dots and I and there was enough people there that knew me that somebody went, you need a dot, here you have one and I sat there and had had lunch with the with the rock star team, I remember.

But we need to talk about we need to talk about the interview because I remember coming to interview as a technical director, possible technical director on Bioshock too.

Alyssa Finley (39:53)
That entire team.

Jake Simpson (39:54)
That's right. And you guys did the best technical interview I've ever had. It was amazing. And we should explain what it was. the team, the technical team, created Jeopardy.

Alyssa Finley (40:08)
Jeopardy.

Yeah. He's programming Jeopardy. Yeah.

Jake Simpson (40:12)
I'll

take STL for 400, please. I remember that. And it was so much fun because I was like really a bit like, I don't really want to do this. Technical tests, I hate these kinds of things. It's always it's always so artificial. It's never appropriate. Because you don't work that way. You don't, you know, it's not how you work every day. But I so I was a bit apprehensive and I came and I sat there and I just remember laughing. Because he would have this big projected up on a big monitor and you're like, I'll take this, do you have it? And then the guy would read out the question and I'd answer it. And it was done in such a fun, inclusive way.

It was a great, great interview process. I don't know who came up with it, but you really did knock that out of the park. Best technical interview I've ever had. I've used

Alyssa Finley (40:48)
He's one of our programmers, hat tip to Jake, who who he was one of the people who came from who came along from the original team on the Boston side. And I think he just had gone through enough terrible technical interviews that he was like, This has to be fun or it is not worthwhile.

Jake Simpson (41:04)
Well it was and i absolutely brilliant. I've used this. I've actually told many other people about this, about this particular interview and said, yeah, this is how it's done. This is how you do it in a fun way. Still puts people on the spot. And some of the the you know, the the eight the thousand dollar questions and all the rest of it were were quite hard as well. But yeah, that was a that was a fun experience.

Alyssa Finley (41:23)
Yeah, you wouldn't be surprised. It's a thousand dollar question. If it was easy, then you would think we weren't doing our jobs.

Jake Simpson (41:29)
True. And also to a certain degree, you get to watch the qu the the ke questions that the people choose. You know, you could say, well, he's already only asking the hundred dollar questions. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah, I could see that. So, Bioshock 2. That that was pretty good. Certainly, I mean, and forgive me for saying this, but it was a lot of more of the same, but it was extremely well done, more of the same. And it was what people wanted more of the same as well, which is unusual to find these days where people actually don't.

Alyssa Finley (41:44)
Yeah.

Jake Simpson (41:58)
go away and try and mess with the the original formula too much. So what was that like building that? There must have been immense pressure because after the success of Bioshock One, you know, there's always the eye of Sauron for the publisher turns to you and all of a sudden there's a son I remember on Soldier Fortune two there was so much more pressure on Soldier of Fortune two than there was when we did Soldier of Fortune One.

Alyssa Finley (42:18)
Well, the gift that we had was that we knew what Bioshock was. And I think that was a gift in many ways. It was a gift because we were able to hire people who were excited about Bioshock because if you know it was pretty much like you could have played the game and we're like, We're making the sequel to that. So if you liked that, this will this will be good for you. And if you hated that, maybe not your thing. It let us hire for the most

self-driven, motivated people we could find because we'd say, like, look, this is what we need. Like, can you, without a whole lot of guidance, without a whole lot of hand holding and oversight, can you make something that is of this level of storytelling and interaction? And we hired people who could, and we were incredibly lucky to do so. And we our our mandate was not to reinvent it, but was to, you know, do things like adding dual wheels.

So that the the things that you felt like you ought to have been able to do in the first game, but just due to time and and other limitations, we couldn't. Now we could really lean into that and and listen to user feedback about the first game, which, you know, despite the fact that it was very successful, people still had opinions about what could be better about it. So that was I mean, it was a gift to know what we were making and to be able to hire people who were excited about making it and what a team that was. Great, great folks.

Super smart people. Jordan Thomas came from the original team, Irrational, where he worked on Fort Frolic in the first game and he was the creative director for the second game. So he had huge big ideas of what we needed to do story wise. And I mean that is a hard set of shoes to step into, but if there is anyone who can do it, it's Jordan. And I I think he he executed on that pretty pretty remarkably.

Jake Simpson (44:05)
Jordan's another person I have a lot of time for, I must say. He has to explain to me a lot of the time what he's actually thinking about because there's there's Jordan speak if you know what I'm saying. yeah, yeah. you have to sort of say take it apart a bit and go, I s yeah, I get there in the end because yeah. He's he's thinking at a level above most other people in terms of abstractness, that's for sure. But yeah. So you did great. I mean you kicked it out of the part, there's no doubt about it. Again.

Alyssa Finley (44:16)
What?

Jake Simpson (44:33)
It's depressing. So much winning we're tired of winning, Ken's back in in Boston working on Bioshop Infinite. No, not through choice, I thought. I didn't think he was given much choice in the in the doubts what he was going to do.

Alyssa Finley (44:46)
We don't always have choice. No.

Jake Simpson (44:48)
that's true. I know, I know. Sometimes it's just enough to put the roof over your head and you know and keep the lights on, isn't it? I absolutely understand that. Running my own studio now. Boy do I understand that. So what happens after that?

Alyssa Finley (44:59)
Thanks for doing.

So you know that team I just described? The one that was incredibly opinionated and self-directed? The other piece of that team that I should have mentioned, the other essential part of making Bioshock two, was the Australian team. Remember those hard hitters who came from made Bioshock One happen? They came with us. They were part of Bioshock Two. And without them we could have we could have never pulled off that PlayStation port. We could have never gotten it done in a little more than two years.

needed that Australian team's incredible heart, incredible smarts, incredible technical prowess. But the Australian team had been cooking on their own project for a long time. And that was XCOM. Back when Irrational was when when it was Irrational and not a 2K studio, I when I started, there were two projects they were excited about doing. And one of them was Bioshock and one of them was XCOM

And John Che, the person running the Australian Studio, was a huge fan of XCOM. Huge. Epic. Beyond words. You know folks like this, I think.

Jake Simpson (46:11)
I do, yeah. you

do. If you ever see my Dalek collection you'll understand, yeah.

Alyssa Finley (46:16)
So they had been in the Australia studio incubating a version of XCOM, which they would put people on and then big irritating projects like Bioshock would come and grab those people and steal them and say, We are in urgent need. We cannot we cannot do what we need to do without these people. So we would borrow folks from the XCOM team to get the Bioshocks done, both of them. But they had been trying to get this

Design off the ground. They had a very interesting first person take on XCOM, which was actually showed at E3 one year. It was a first person shooter. It had absolutely inscrutable aliens, aliens like you have never seen before. It was set in the 50s as sort of a hard boiled, you know, you were playing this the hard boiled FBI agent in the world of these inscrutable aliens, trying to figure out how to stop them, as one does.

We took that team that we had hired, that incredibly headstrong, ready to do, knowing knowing exactly what they want, ready to do what they needed to do to make things happen team, and we asked them to take creative leadership from a incredibly smart set of folks on the other side of the world with whom we had an hour's overlap per day half during half the year.

Jake Simpson (47:38)
That does not seem like a recipe for success.

Alyssa Finley (47:41)
We did not have the ability to make to bring that team together into sharing a vision as to what XCOM should be. And over the course of working on XCOM, which did it it was a version of the game that did ultimately ship called The Bureau, XCOM Declassified. Some people have played it. I have a poster on my wall behind me. It was rebooted I think three at least three times.

with various leadership teams, with various structures, to try to find a heart of the game that people could get behind and build. The Australian team that came up with the original idea ended up not keeping creative control of it very much not due to their talent, not due to their inability to have a vision. They had everything they needed, but they weren't structurally set up to be able to get that vision across due to that the time zone problems and having

Strong personalities ready to try to make something if they understood what it was, but not understanding what it was. It was it was a it was a very, very hard setup. It was a very a strong wake-up call for me about cross-studio development and multi-studio development and multi-time zone development and how to make that work and how to build leadership teams that can make that work. And I think a lot of that failure, a lot of the the reasons that we had to reboot so much and the reasons that the original

Vision did not was not able to be re realized. They were mine. Those were my failures. I didn't set the team up to win. And I you know, it wasn't their fault. It was not due to their ta lack of talent or lack of vision. But ultimately, about three reboots in, the Australia team fulfilled their destiny once again by getting pulled over to Infinite.

And the XCOM project was given entirely to the Marin team and and a and a few folks who came over who came over to try to follow it through. But other than that it was the Marin team closing it out. By this point it had gone from being a pure first person shooter to a I I think it was hybrid first third to ultimately third person. and it became you know, it it went through some it went through some real changes. We got

We got the Greys back in there. We got some more familiar aliens back in there and some things that some callbacks to the original series. And during this time, Foraxis, who had been faithfully working on their XCOM reboot this entire time, they actually jumped the queue and released the XCOM that we all that that I think everyone wanted. The one that was like the original game, the one that was insanely hard, the one that was insane, you know, just that hit all the beats and was all the things that

an XCOM fan wanted it to be and they did a tremendous job. Boy did they. I don't I am not sure that the world wanted a third person XCOM game, but we gave them one. And soon after the two K studio got shut down.

Jake Simpson (50:49)
The world doesn't know what it wants, that's for sure. But so I mean that's you it's a bit of an unanimous end, but I mean these things happen, you know, it's it's the fact is you covered yourself with a fairly large amount of glory to begin with, which a lot of studios don't have. You know, there's a lot of studios that disappear into the distance and they don't have that kind of success behind them. You know, does anybody really remember ritual that much? Yeah, they had sin and they did Elite Force too, but I mean beyond that, I don't think if anyone really remembers them that much. So it's a shame because they were

really great people there. But you guys at least have something like Bioshark and Bioshock Two to to to fall back on and go, look, you know, we did actually know what we were doing. So I don't think it's all as bad as that. You know, you at least you come out of it with something to point at. So what happened next

Alyssa Finley (51:37)
So 2K Marin got shut down. We did it as graciously as possible, but we were we were being closed down as a couple of other 2K studios were being wound up. So some folks were able to be placed on things like the Mafia Three team and and other things. and the rest of us went to the four winds as one does. And at that point I found a job just just down the street at Telltale Games. Right.

And they were working on I was re I happened to be reading Game of Thrones at the time. I had never read it, never, and I just picked it up. Someone was like, the will like this, and I started reading it. And in my interview, they they we know we talked they were looking for someone who had, you know, just a strong producer to come in and try to build a little bit more of systems around things. and at the end they were just it was the casual throwaway question, what are you reading lately? And I was like, my god, I'm reading Game of Thrones, it's amazing, like so much.

So much this and that. Turns out they were looking for someone to EP. The Game of Thrones they had the license, the Game of Thrones franchise license, so they put me on that and that was fun. So I started at Telltale Games working on episodic and learning the ways of shipping early, often in fact.

Jake Simpson (52:55)
Yes indeed.

Alyssa Finley (52:56)
Very different than triple A.

Jake Simpson (52:58)
And yeah, I remember doing that in his lab. We shipped every two weeks. That was a scary environment to be in. But yeah. still it's a different set of skills. and the pressure is off in some ways and on in others. it always has to run, it always has to work.

Alyssa Finley (53:11)
Never happened to be. The thing that I love the most is that you never had time to dither on a decision. Like it was not about like remember those when you're in triple A and it takes you a week to or two weeks or a month to figure something out? When you're in episodic, you need to make that decision today. And if you didn't make it today and you don't make it tomorrow, you probably missed your date on your episode.

Jake Simpson (53:33)
Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. You can't go, Well, let's just see how that go that works out then and we'll we'll see when when that bit's done, we'll take another look at No, you're not doing that. I know exactly what you mean.

Alyssa Finley (53:43)
And it's good. I mean that that is a lesson that I think I needed to learn. I I think one of the things that, you know, even we weren't exactly leisurely at two K Marin, but there were certainly decisions I could have made faster. And this was like talk about firing pan into the fire. This was a place where you got to see the results of your calls very quickly. And that also is a gift.

Jake Simpson (54:03)
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I can see that. All right, so so telltale, I mean, w how long were you there? Two years?

Alyssa Finley (54:09)
no, a little longer than that. I think it was more maybe more two two and a half, three, maybe maybe I made it to a little past my third year anniversary. I can't remember exactly, but yeah, it was it was enough to do the whole season of Game of Thrones to work as to work across projects for a while and sort of improve processes. And then I did I actually was creative director for a while. See your question about creative on

Walking Dead season three, which is a d a funny story unto itself. And then after that after we shipped that, we started started on Wolf Among Us Two, which was the project I was working on when everything fell apart and Telltale shut down precipitously.

Jake Simpson (54:54)
Yeah, that was a bit of a sh abrupt thing, wasn't it?

Alyssa Finley (54:56)
It was, it was. It was a it was a it was a Friday and they pulled us all into one of those, you know, like I think the email went out at ten. The rumors were rampant by ten two, you know, like as they always are, you know, get your get the get get get your get your portfolios together and and it was because literally it we had half an hour after that meeting to clear out of the office. So it was good that the rumors got around and you know, the the however

that initial seed set of people started to know, they told people, because why wouldn't they? And everyone had a little bit more time to process. Though i it was hard to believe in the moment. The like, no, we're shutting down today, right now, with our final paychecks as we speak. Ha. Okay. Okay.

Jake Simpson (55:40)
Yeah, somebody wasn't planning very well, that's for sure.

Alyssa Finley (55:43)
I think, you know, it's it's you can't plan based on hope.

Jake Simpson (55:47)
That's very true. And you I I've also found that you can't plan on what people say they might be doing. Right. That's another thing you can't do. Yeah. It's all these people, for example, who are you know, Epic says on Unreal 4, they're going to give us this feature. Look, if it's not there on that day, you can never depend that it's going to be there. Because Epic's going to do whatever's right for Epic, not for you. That's for sure. So Telltale, another one bites the dust. And on to

Alyssa Finley (56:15)
On to ILM. I so I actually went a little while in between jobs this time because I thought, you know, maybe maybe I'll start my own company. That could be fun.

Too much hard work. tried to tried to pitch out a concept to a bunch of folks, actually got farther than we probably should have, and and got to got to took some great meetings and made some great pitches and almost, almost, almost, but almost doesn't, you know, almost only counts in horseshoes and we didn't get there.

Jake Simpson (56:48)
Industry, a friend of mine once said to me, This industry is an industry where it's really easy for people to almost give you money.

Alyssa Finley (56:55)
Yes, exactly. We ha but we were you know, the I think that I talked to a bunch of really smart folks right at the start of that process. And the best advice I got was it is going to take you at least twice as long as you think it's as you think you can afford it to take you to do this. And if your whole team is not ready to take that long, you're not gonna make it. And they were right. And what happened is you know, one of the team that I was pitching with just took another job because they needed to pay their rent. And who can blame them?

Jake Simpson (57:25)
Hofstadter's law is what you're referring to there. But yeah, it always takes longer than you think it will, even when you take into account Hofstadter's law, yes. I absolutely yeah, the the the duration of contract signing and how long it takes to get a contract is just staggering these days. I've got to yeah, been there on the receiving end of that. So ILM nut comes knocking and you're like, Come on in.

Alyssa Finley (57:46)
I'm like, you know what? I do you they they were hiring for someone to help make episodic and I was like, Say, you can't imagine anyone more more suited than I

Jake Simpson (57:58)
Gosh, I think I might know something about that.

Alyssa Finley (58:01)
Exactly. So they were looking for someone to work on episodes two and three of Vader Immortal for VR for for the Oculus Quest, which was just getting like when I was hired, it was not yet released, but Vader Immortal episode one needed to come out day and day. So they were that was already well underway, and they wanted to make sure that we had something to follow it up with. And I was like, I can do that. So I got to learn about VR and and get to work in the Star Wars.

Universe and all sorts of really fun things, which has been kind of delightful. So totally different world than AAA, but not such a different world than Episodic. And worked on the Vader, the two Vader Immortals, and then got to do a much longer form VR experience called Tales from the Galaxy's Edge, Star Wars Tales from the Galaxy's Edge, which we shipped over the last it was a it was a pandemic baby game where we

Shipped it in September of that first pandemic year and then shipped the second half in November of the second pandemic year or vice versa. I think I got the dates wrong, but close close enough.

Jake Simpson (59:11)
the the galaxy now that doesn't that focus on the planet that is the Star Wars experience in in Disney?

Alyssa Finley (59:20)
That's right, which is Galaxy's Edge. So we are adjacent

Jake Simpson (59:25)
It's got a name though, doesn't it? Yeah, that's it. Yeah. So I'm gonna tell you quick story about this, because this this is my story. I don't know, about four years ago, maybe three and a half, three years ago, three and a half years ago, I had a phone call from a friend of mine who was an imagineer and he said, Jake, do you know anything about Unity? And I'm Yeah, we can do Unity product. He said, Could you could you make four or five different screens from one Unity instance? I'm Yeah, you do the subdivision and blah blah blah. Yeah, of course you can.

He said, well, if there were little LEDs, could you do that? I'm like, yeah. Well, it's always about. He said, could you come to Burbank? I'm like, well, I happen to be in LA next week. My sister-in-law is actually with her family in LA, and we're all going out there, I'll come and find you. And he Yeah, okay, fine. So I get there. I end up in at Burbank, and that is a fantastic experience. I mean, I'm sure you've been there, but it's an amazing experience to to see where the imagineers do their work. and this was just before D twenty three. So they had an enormous 3D map.

It's like 30 feet 3D model of what Star Wars land was going to look like. And I sat there salivating over after having signed the 14-page MDA, Disney NDA, which basically threatens your life if you talk about anything. And they took me in to show me what the the the ride they were working on was, and it turned out to be a smuggler's run. And I was like eyes popping out, and they had the whole thing mocked up and they had there were five projectors in the front in the curved bit.

And they had five instances of Unreal operating in concert to to project the imageries. And I was like, my God, this is you know, I mean it's just you know what it's like. You get to work in the Star Wars university, it's a big thing. and they were looking for someone to do the LED panels. So when you sit in the the Star Wars smuggles run, there are little LED panels, you have three buttons to press that you can change the events of what's going on inside of the Falcon based on the buttons you press. And I came out of it going, absolutely, let me give you a quote. I'm gonna fall over myself, I can do this. So I sent them a quote.

And never heard another word. And I was like, and I kept I went to talk to my friend via Facebook, texted him, called him, emailed him, and I was like, Did I was I was bad breath? Was the quote really bad? Did I say anything inappropriate? Just let me know and apologize. And I was my wife was looking at me when I was writing the quote and she said, I bet you're having a really hard time not telling them that you do it for nothing. Yeah. when the actual ride came out, it became clear I actually

contacted the guy and he actually replied to me this and he Yeah, I do apologize, we sort of dropped you. That's kind of the way that imagineering works. He said, But what had happened was we didn't actually have the money for this. We all of the rides are paid for by the park and we'd already exceeded the budget for smugglers run, but we wanted to do this this, you know, so people had something to do while they were sitting in the core in the the the ride itself and also when you're standing in line. He said the thing we're trying to do at Disney at the moment is trying to make standing in line a lot more palatable so that you actually have something to do while you're standing in line and waiting.

I'm like, okay. And he said, What happened was we we didn't know what it was going to cost. We had no idea. So we took your quote and then we sent it back to the the the two parks that have the Star Wars land to for them to pay it. And in the process of us doing that, we mentioned to ILM who was doing the model creation that we were doing this and ILM went, no, it's no problem. We'll get the people who do the the in game graphics, the in the UI graphics for the movie to do it.

And I'm like, so I was never really in the ever gonna be getting. He Well, you were right up until the point when Island went, No, no, no, they would just get the people who do the movie stuff to do it. And I'm like, well, I guess you could have let me know that. So never mind. I at least got to see it before it came out. But you know, it was it was a fun experience and I'm glad I had that. I would have killed to have worked on that. Do you know what? I've still never actually done the the ride.

Alyssa Finley (1:03:09)
I'm gonna make a confession to you, Jake, neither have I.

Jake Simpson (1:03:13)
dear, I've got to get out there. I have so many friends who worked on Rise of the Resistance as well, and I want to do that. But apparently that's really, really difficult to get on. Anyway, we

Alyssa Finley (1:03:21)
Less so now, but yes, yes. No, we actually we had a preview day of Galaxy's Edge that w the team was a invited to go before it opened to the public as one of the practice days. And unfortunately it was right around the time we were shipping one of the episodes and foolish me said, I'll I'll I'll hang back and make sure everything goes okay on the home front. well, but thinking that, you know, like I'll go when we have a big vacation, you know, in in in twenty twenty, it'll be great.

Jake Simpson (1:03:43)
yourself.

Yeah. We're actually making plans to go this summer actually. So we're gonna I'm finally gonna get to do it. Kathy's been Kathy and the family have been multiple times because they did several conferences actually at Disney's resort. So you get automatic you don't get automatic access to the park, but you do get hotels and all the rest of it. So they've done it and I haven't, so I I'm quite upset. But I'm gonna do it, I'll do it. So there you are, you're still there. So what is what does the the what is it, I L

Alyssa Finley (1:04:21)
LMX lab. It's the it's the innovation lab.

Jake Simpson (1:04:24)
What is it what does that mean? What what do they actually do?

Alyssa Finley (1:04:27)
I think the the vision for it is that it's finding the newest and best and most innovative ways to make stories. And I think the whole the whole r raison d'etre of X Lab is to never do the same thing twice. To to be in innovations in an innovation space. And that has been tremendously

Jake Simpson (1:04:49)
So you're always cutting edge, always finding out what works, what doesn't, and and okay, I could see that. Are there any jobs going?

Alyssa Finley (1:05:00)
They they're just by B J.

Jake Simpson (1:05:02)
I I kind of got my hands full.

Alyssa Finley (1:05:04)
Yeah, and I think you do.

Jake Simpson (1:05:06)
Kinda have my hands full. Well, Alyssa, I've gotta say, I think it's time to wrap this up now. I really appreciate you spending the time with me. You've had a very, very interesting career and I've I've really enjoyed hearing about it. Thank you so much for spending this time with me.

Alyssa Finley (1:05:19)
Jake, you are always delightful to talk to and I appreciate you spending the time going through it all with me. I've enjoyed your stories as well.

Jake Simpson (1:05:27)
Well this is great. Thanks very much.